Every piece of evidence surrounding the authorship of Richard II: Thomas of Woodstock points to one of two truths:
(1) If the play was written in the early 1590’s, then Shakespeare must have written it. (If not, then its deep similarities to later Shakespearean plays would indicate that Shakespeare spent the bulk of his career cribbing from the work of an anonymous and apparently forgotten playwright.)
(2) If the play was written after 1600, then Shakespeare probably did not write it. (The relative crudity of the play coupled to such a late date makes it unlikely as the sequel to the polished Richard II, and makes it far more plausible that the play’s similarities are the result of someone cribbing from Shakespeare’s mature works.)
But in the absence of any certainty regarding the play’s authorship, why should it be included in the Complete Readings of William Shakespeare?
Partly because we believe that staging the apocrypha gives a unique and exciting opportunity to see plays which are rarely or never performed. If an apocryphal play like Richard II: Thomas of Woodstock was, in fact, written by Shakespeare, then it’s an important part of the project’s goal to include it. But even if it is not, such plays are an important part of the American Shakespeare Repertory’s mission to provide the rich, Elizabethan context in which Shakespeare’s plays were originally staged.
Which is the other reason we believe it’s important to stage Richard II: Thomas of Woodstock. Amidst all the uncertainty, there is one thing we can be sure of: There was a play on the London stage dramatizing the events surrounding Thomas of Woodstock’s death. If it wasn’t Richard II: Thomas of Woodstock, then it was some other play covering the same ground.
Whether or not that play was by Shakespeare, it would have been fresh in the minds of those who saw the premiere of Richard II — a part of the cultural gestalt created by Elizabethan theater. It’s a context which has been largely, if not entirely, inaccessible for the past 400 years. But it’s a context which the Complete Readings of William Shakespeare is uniquely suited to restore.
Originally posted September 18th, 2010.
